Louis Rosen: John Lennon’s Imagine
Under the aegis of the 92Y.
Host Louis Rosen begins this evening’s chapter of Singer/Songwriters by contextualizing the album Imagine. He tells us of harrowing incidents during which fans unwittingly put The Beatles in danger. After Lennon’s infamous, off the cuff comment, “We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first – rock & roll or Christianity,” threats started to arrive, one of the reasons the group stopped touring.
We watch a clip from the film, Gimme Some Truth: The Making of the Imagine Album. Lennon and Yoko Ono had just moved into Tittenhurst, an enormous estate outside London where they would record Imagine.
Yoko was understandably concerned about security. Apparently a strange young man had taken up residence in their garden. We see the couple on their doorstep talking to a disheveled intruder. John felt responsible. “Don’t confuse the songs with your own life,” Lennon tells him. “Anything fits if you’re tripping on something… I was just having fun with words…I’m thinking about me or at best Yoko if it’s a love song. If it’s relevant to other people’s lives, that’s good… Are you hungry?” The stranger is invited into their kitchen and fed.
John and Yoko moved into New York’s Dakota for security reasons, yet people were more than once found wandering the halls of the posh Upper West Side building looking for him. “He’d become an icon beyond The Beatles. This was part of his daily life. As for security, It was hard for him to imagine anyone would want to hurt him. He believed in political progress and all you need is love. It’s still the 1960s and the idea of bodyguards seemed antithetical to what they were about. Then he became the first popular songwriter to be assassinated – for delusional reasons.” (LR)
After the raw, eclectic Plastic Ono Band, Lennon realized he needed to start making music that satisfied both him and the market. “To give the sound, what he called chocolate coating, he brought in a string section he nicknamed the flux fiddlers. George played guitar, Phil Spector arrived to produce. Imagine is gentler than his last effort but not without something to say. Let’s selectively listen.” We listen to the title track.
Rosen shares an anecdote. “When it was released, the song Imagine was considered by many to be naïve pabulum. I was never a big fan. At the time I lived in Chicago and it was constantly on the radio. Even at 16, it seemed far from reality to me. Then in 2008, Capathia Jenkins and I performed in Zimbabwe. There was a large community pageant, a theater piece about an evil dictator who stole the peoples’ songs. The show ended with a couple of hundred people singing `Imagine.’ They were hopeful of having voted Mugabe out. I heard it completely differently. John wanted to write something spiritual in league with George’s `My Sweet Lord’ and Paul’s ‘Let It Be.’”
The host points out that Lennon could also be aggressively angry or self-lacerating. “Imagine” is followed by “Crippled Inside.” You can go to church and sing a hymn/Judge me by the color of my skin/You can live a lie until you die/One thing you can’t hide/Is when you’re crippled inside. The tune sounds like yee-haw rockabilly, while its lyric is anything but. George (Harrison) played slide dobro. “It’s easier to say something that blunt if you wrap it in good energy,” Rosen observes. Where Paul occasionally enjoyed twee, music hall tunes, John veered towards country.
“He was 31 and as long as he’d been alive a self-professed “Jealous Guy” (LR) : I didn’t want to hurt you/I’m just a jealous guy. The song is a melodic ballad with strings. “It could’ve been on Plastic Ono if you took off the strings. What we tend to think of as a composer’s signature is often just repetition. Certainly if anyone can steal from him, he should have the right.” (LR)
“Gimme Some Truth” shows Lennon as wordsmith. No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky/Is gonna Mother Hubbard soft soap me/With just a pocket full of hope/Money for dope/Money for rope…George flies on guitar. “And here’s one of the most beautiful love songs he ever wrote” (LR) introduces “Oh My Love.” Multiple voice tracks resonate gently.
The host tells us that Paul McCartney had already put out the album Ram. On it was “Too Many People.” That was your first mistake/You took your lucky break and broke it in two/Now what can be done for you? Lennon took it personally. (The host conjectures it was meant to be personal.) This was the second slight John endured. When the Beatles broke up at his instigation, it was important that no one know until new contracts went through. John had agreed to stay silent and was outraged when seven months later, Paul let it slip.
“His next song became the most controversial on the album among Beatles fans.” (LR) Here’s where John hits back at Paul. Lennon’s biographer called it a tipping point very like one experienced by a divorced couple. Rosen remarks it was like bringing a bazooka to a fist fight. A pretty face may last a year or two/But pretty soon they’ll see what you can do/The sound you make is Muzak to my ears/You must have learned something all those years… The song is called “How Do You Sleep?”
Add to that, in the slipcase John inserted a postcard with a photo of his holding a pig by the ears, parodying the back cover of Ram where Paul holds a ram by the ears. (When Paul lived on Bank Street, the two met and agreed to a truce.)
“John never did anything in a small way. His reactions were always large and all-in, then at some point, he’d get disillusioned and lash out.” (LR) “How?” says How can I give love when I don’t know what I’m giving?/How can I give love when I just don’t know how to give…”
Rosen addresses sequence of songs. “A good album can be killed by poor sequencing. There’s a reason why the main entertainment magazine was called Variety. “George and I leaned towards the underground style; Paul leaned more to pop, but I don’t think any of us were harmed by it.” (JL) “I’d say my favorite songs are `Imagine,’ `Jealous Guy,’ and `Oh My Love.’ If he’d put those three in a row, they’d’ve washed out. Also, what do you want to leave people with? In this case, `Oh Yoko!’”
1972 was a hard time to live in New York for outspokenly political John Lennon. He was close to being deported when a Green Card came through. Still, the FBI tailed him most everywhere. “John called it overt not covert. In addition, the couple were distancing. Yoko sent him to Los Angeles. A two-week stay turned out to be his 14 month lost weekend (after the film of the same name about a ruined alcoholic).” The couple talked all the time, but he was in essence, exiled. “John spent a lot of time with Harry Nilsson. Nilsson loved to drink and was good at it. John loved to drink, but was no good at it. Suddenly he’d flip and the insanity would start.” (LR)
We’re told that that “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” (in duet with Elton John) brought his wife back. We watch the almost entirely animated video, but for clips with John and Yoko. Having lost a bet with Elton John that the song would be a chart-topper, Lennon appeared onstage with him at Madison Square Garden. Yoko showed up and went back stage. Recording began in New York again, without drugs or alcohol. Forty-two year-old Yoko got pregnant. The couple moved back together. John became a homebody.
Rosen plays us one last song from the next album, Mind Games: “Bless You.” Holding her now/Be warm and kind hearted/And remember though love is strange/Now and forever our love will remain…It’s mellow.
“John was a terrific songwriter whose music can really surprise. There are so many things that make up this iconic figure, we forget what a fantastic writer he was.” (LR)
